


a broken heart is still beating (please come home for christmas)

by madfatty



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 23:12:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4198632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madfatty/pseuds/madfatty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little look at Finn in Leeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a broken heart is still beating (please come home for christmas)

**Author's Note:**

> This was a VERY late Secret Santa gift for teastaindiary on tumblr.
> 
> Title is again stolen from the very talented Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds. Oh, and the Eagles.

Finn hits the off button on the alarm clock next to his bed as soon as it starts to bleat and sighs deeply. He’s been awake for hours, his head too full to rest at all but now that he has to be awake, his body craves sleep. It’s been that way for weeks now. He’s not had a proper night’s rest since she’d finished with him. He rolls over onto his back in the tiny single bed, every muscle protesting, and stares blankly at the ceiling.

He’s such an idiot. How could he think that running away to Leeds would change anything? And for all his reasoning and self-justification, run away was what he’d done. He’d thought that if he could put some distance between him and her, it’d be easier. He’d get over her the way she seemed to have gotten over him. But it hadn’t worked. He’s still miserable. He’d told Rae as much that night he’d gone ‘round to hers, for all the good it did him.

He’d asked Arch to meet him at the pub that afternoon and told him that he’d decided it was best for him to leave college and go work with his uncle up north. While his friend had looked at him sadly, he hadn’t seemed surprised, almost as if he’d expected the news. Finn didn’t understand how Arch did that, always seemed to know what Finn was going to say before he said it.

He’d wanted to slink off with his tail between his legs, no fuss made, but his dad and Arch had encouraged him to at least tell his friends that he was going. 

“You need to tell her, mate. If you tell her what you’re planning, how you feel, she’ll ask you to stay for sure. She loves you.” Arch had seemed more certain about this than he had about anything ever before, and as Archie appeared to be the world’s leading authority on the inner workings of Rae as far as Finn could see, it made sense to take his advice.

So he’d gone to see her, Archie’s words still ringing in his ears, hoping against hope that she’d ask him to stay, tell him that she’d made a huge mistake and that she really did love him and wanted him back. He felt the lump rise in his throat, felt the familiar burn of it, felt the sting behind his eyes as tears threatened when he remembered how quickly and completely she’d dismissed his attempt to reach out to her because she had someplace else to be.

As it turned out Arch knew three parts of fuck-all about what Rae Earl would and wouldn’t do, which had provided Finn with an odd sort of comfort.

 

His dad had wanted to drive him, just to delay the inevitable separation, but Finn knew that a long drawn out goodbye would be harder on them both and insisted on driving himself. He spent the two and a half hour trip reminiscing about the gang and the summer and how quickly she’d become the one real bright spot in his life, how meeting her had made all the things he was miserable about seem less shitty, more tolerable, and intermittently swiping angrily at his red, swollen eyes.

The boxroom is tiny and cramped with the meagre belongings he’d brought with him; he hasn’t really unpacked. Finn’s Uncle Tony and Aunt Gail had both offered to help him settle in, to move him to the bigger spare room, but Finn quietly declined. He’s kind of relying on the awkward discomfort of the room and the heavy, temporary feel the unpacked boxes fill him with to somehow spur him on to make a decision; the only decision that he knows will make him happy once his stubborn brain and his broken heart step out of the way.

So he tortures himself with fantasies of a day-to-day life that still has her in it. Elaborate nothings, tiny trivialities he’d sell his soul for: holding her hand as they walked along the High Street, the green-apple smell of her hair filling his senses as he leans in to kiss her, the raucous music of her laughter, the thrill of her reaching for him first, the slight brush of her fingers against his skin, the innate feeling of contentment that enveloped him when he was safe within the circle of her arms. It had all been such a brief reality that it was now hard to discern it from his frequently vivid daydreams.

It hasn’t even been a full week yet and he wants to go home already. He’s even more miserable than before and he didn’t think that was possible.

He’d wanted to call her, hear her voice, but distance hadn’t taught him how to say the things he needed to say out loud and she was too far away in every way for him to press them into her skin. On his second night there, he’d borrowed pen and paper and poured his heart out to her. Once sealed, he entrusted the letter to his aunt, who promised to send it the next day. He’s felt sick to his stomach since.

Tuesday was wet and miserable and Tony had called an early finish at work due to the lousy weather. While the other lads had hightailed it to the local pub, Finn found himself wandering around the nearby shopping centre, looking for a distraction that didn’t involve booze. Tony had said he seemed to recall there was a second-hand record shop somewhere around here and that was as good a place to start as any.

It’s mid-November so the centre is swathed in red, green and gold and it’s yet another reminder of all the things he’s missing. It was supposed to be his first Christmas with Rae and he’d hoped that all the promise that went along with that would in some small way, take the edge off it being the first Christmas without Nan.

Nan loved Christmas. All the preparation; the shopping and the wrapping. The endless lists of things still left to do. And because she loved it, Finn loved it too. The heady smell of cloves and brandy permeating the house. Sitting with her in the kitchen, hot tea and gingerbread, as she rattled off all the jobs she needed him to do. Taking his turn mixing the Christmas cake batter when the bowl got too heavy and her arms got tired. The sounds of his dad coming from the living room, alternately crooning along with Nat ‘King’ Cole and swearing magnificently as he tried to untangle the Christmas lights. The silly paper hats and the eggnog. Christmas crackers on the table. The too-full, fat, lazy feeling after Christmas lunch as he spread out on the floor at her feet listening to the tiny reassuring noise of her snoring above him as his dad and Uncle Tony laughed and argued in the kitchen over the washing up.

He misses his nan but there’s nothing he can do about that. He thinks of his dad all alone in the house surrounded by nothing but ghosts and silver tinsel and he feels sick. He misses his dad and his own bed, he misses his records and his mates, but most of all he misses Rae… and there is something he can do about that. He’s starting to realise that it doesn’t matter where he goes, he’ll still ache for her. A little voice in his head says that if he’s going to hurt anyway, hurting in Stamford - where he can have all those other things back, where he can still maybe see her, maybe even one day get her back - would be better than hurting on his own a hundred and thirty miles away. He has to go home for Christmas.

He’s still looking for the record shop when he walks past a jeweller’s. It’s not his thing at all but as he’s hurrying past, his eyes light on a piece that stops him in his tracks. Amongst all the garish, glittering baubles he spots a silver treble clef on a delicate chain, perched on a white satin pillow in a dark blue box. Without thinking, he pushes his way through the heavy glass door of the shop, already reaching for his wallet. Even though it’s on sale, it still takes most of the money his dad had stuffed in his jacket pocket as he pulled him in for a final bone-crushing hug before Finn had driven away. Finn leaves the shop with his hands shoved deeply in his pockets, the small blue box grasped tightly in his fingers, his face still warm and pink from the sales lady’s teasing about how lucky his girlfriend is to have such a sweet, handsome, thoughtful boyfriend such as himself and if she were just twenty years younger… 

When he gets back to his room he takes it out of its packaging and stares at it for a long time. He’s got no idea how he’s going to give it to her or if she’ll even want it.

It’s her birthday a week and a half before Christmas. He’d learned that on a Wednesday afternoon in one of the many whispered conversations they’d had tangled on the floor of his bedroom. It was in the loved-up first couple of weeks when his mission had been to snog her face off and know all there was to know about Rae Earl. Between soft, shy looks and earth shattering snogging sessions he had gently interrogated her; favourites, firsts, bests and worsts, he wanted to know it all.

He can’t figure out if it’s more significant if he gives it to her for her birthday than if he gives it to her for Christmas. Would it be weird of him to give it to her for her birthday, even though she’s no longer his girlfriend? Is he allowed to buy a birthday present for his ex-girlfriend? Or does he keep it for her for Christmas? Or does he just tell her the truth; that he saw it in the shop window and it made him think of her? She doesn’t have to know that everything makes him think of her. Maybe he’ll ring Izzy. She’ll know.

He’s dressed and ready for work in ten minutes and when he comes downstairs the radio is on softly in the kitchen. Finn hears the deejay play the Eagles’ ‘Please Come Home for Christmas’ and he wants to cry but he’s all cried out this morning, so he picks up his jacket from the back of the kitchen chair and shrugs it on. He pats his pockets for his Walkman and feels the edges of the small blue box. He thinks about leaving it here at the house for safe keeping, but he can’t bring himself to take it out of his pocket. He heads for the front door - Tony’s already waiting in the van – when he remembers his lunch on the kitchen table and turns back to collect it. And then the phone rings.


End file.
